Although a critical determinant in the success of any business is the quality of the products or services offered by a particular company, quality takes on an arguably greater role in the service industry. In the telecommunications call handling service industry, where call agents interact with thousands of customers daily, satisfying customer expectations literally defines the parameters of success. In, contrast to manufacturing entities, where quality can be readily quantified by applying statistical process controls to the manufacturing process, service companies, such as telecommunications call centers, often have no comparable method of accurately monitoring and measuring the quality of a service provided to a customer. As a result, many telecommunications call handling businesses rely to a greater extent on internal monitoring systems to ensure that call handling agents perform within accepted business practices, rather than attempting to measure an external customer's subjective perception of a service encounter.
Current telecommunications call handling businesses attempt to measure customer satisfaction in a two-fold approach. First, supervisory personnel monitor a percentage of calls in progress to determine whether the call handling agent is adhering to established company practices. Secondly, the service company attempts to collect customer feedback from the service contact by conducting telephone interviews with customers of the service.
Many telecommunications companies engaged in live agent call handling rely primarily on internal measurements derived from service observing to determine the level of accuracy and courtesy provided by their call attendants to the calling customers. These systems typically utilize random monitoring of customer contacts by special supervisory agents from remote locations. Once a predetermined number of customer contacts has been monitored, reports are generated in which errors or irregularities observed are calculated as service indices and summarized for various operational levels.
Although this monitoring system has some success in measuring certain technical elements of the call attendants' job, the monitoring system is unable to measure quality from the customers' perspective. Additionally, increasing employee concerns of monitoring has led both unions and legislatures to restrict or prohibit this method of service oversight.
Telephone interviews with customers and survey questionnaires are utilized to supplement these internal measurement systems. Outside market research firms are often used to ensure total objectivity. These surveys normally consist of customers randomly selected from a transaction database such as a billing file, new order file, repair or maintenance request or other such customer activity. A series of specific service questions is then asked with the data summarized for the various levels of management. Due to the cost of the interviews, the sample size typically is not statistically valid for any one month but is instead summarized for a rolling three month interval.
This type of telephone interview provides some needed input from the customer to management, but inherent problems prevent the system from being effective. For example, directory assistance and long distance operators work in large team configurations with three or more offices often serving large areas. Customer evaluations can be made for the entire area but individual office performance generally can not be determined. Moreover, results are almost never timely, due to the lengthy interview process and the small sample size. The Bell System divestiture has caused even more significant problems. The interview results are often suspect due to customer confusion between toll and directory assistance operators as well as by customer confusion as to what company actually provided the service.
Additionally, the validity and usefulness of the survey depends on many factors, such as: the sample size; whether the response is from the actual customer that received the service; whether the information was provided in a timely manner; whether the individual employee performance was measured; whether the customer understands precisely what service factor is being evaluated; whether the customer knows which company provided the service; and, whether any customer comments are available for management review. For example, calls originating from coin telephones and/or hotel/motels, etc. are not sampled by this process. This type of traffic can represent over 50% of the total volume.
Most telecommunications call handling centers use some type of telephonic switch to automatically route incoming customer telephone calls to available call handling agents. Perhaps the most common of these telephonic switches is the automatic call distributor (ACD), a type of switch well-known in the art that generally includes a multiport switch controlled by a central processing unit to interconnect the calling customers to the call handling agents. In addition to routing calls, the ACD is capable of processing and reporting information on various aspects of the calls it routes, such as time, duration and identifying information. The increasing role of the ACD in the call handling industry has allowed for a partial automation of traditional monitoring methods.
With respect to known patents in this field, several inventions have been specifically directed toward improving upon the general methods of monitoring and measuring the service provided by a telecommunications call attendant, discussed above. All of these inventions are concerned with partially automating a portion of the typical call monitoring method utilizing a live supervisor.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,818,907, Maloney, et al. teaches a method and system for automatically monitoring the performance quality of call center service representatives. With this invention, a supervisor is capable of scheduling a pre-determined number of calls to be recorded for a particular service representative within a specific predetermined time interval. The supervisor then may listen to the recorded calls at the supervisor's convenience. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,790,635 to Dezonno, a system and method for automatic monitoring of active telephone calls in a telephonic switch is taught. Utilizing this method and system, an ACD monitoring system measures the length of time of active incoming telephone calls. The calls are then organized in order of decreasing duration. A live supervisor then has the option of monitoring only those calls which exceed a pre-determined call duration value. The rationale for this approach is that an exceedingly lengthy telephone call likely indicates that the call is not being handled in an efficient and prompt manner.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,854,832 to Dezonno, a system and method is taught in which a monitoring system detects, for an incoming telephone call, the length of time an agent is talking, the length of time a caller is talking, the length of time neither party is talking and, finally, the total length of the call. It is believed that, with this invention, excessively talkative agents can be identified. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,712,954, Dezonno teaches a system and method for monitoring the audio power level of an agent's speech in a telephonic switch. This invention detects the audio power level of an agent's speech and compares this level to a predetermined minimum and maximum threshold level. Correspondingly, an appropriate message is displayed on the agent's terminal to “Speak Softer” or “Speak Louder.” In U.S. Pat. No. 5,737,405 also to Dezonno, an apparatus and method is taught for detecting conversation interruptions in a telephonic switch. Utilizing this invention, both the caller's speech and the agent's speech are detected using audio signal detectors. When the caller's speech and the agent's speech are simultaneously detected, a conversation interruption has occurred and a supervisor is notified. Finally, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,818,909 to Van Berkum et al. an agent speech detector system and method is taught in which a speech detector monitors the voice of an agent during a call routed to the agent by a telephonic switch. If the speech detector detects that the agent did not speak during the telephone call, the speech detector sends this information to a supervisor's computer system. It is important to note that no known system is directed specifically towards measuring an external customer's satisfaction in real time at the point of the customer contact.